The Differences of Teenagers in the 1940s Compared to
Teenagers Today
Elizabeth Ann Murphy
Keller Regional Gifted Center, Chicago
Teacher: Sandra Cap
"Teenager" was not even a word until the late
1940s. Zoot suits, bobby-soxers, soda
shops, do not sound familiar. These were all things 1940 teenagers know. A teenager's life in the 1940s and today is
extremely different in the areas of high school life and home life.
If you stepped into a classroom in the 1940s, you might see
girls making dresses and boys training
hard in physical education. At Crane Technical High School, physical education was very important because the
principal wanted to keep all of the boys in tiptop shape for war. At Lucy
Flower High School for girls, the students studied hat making, laundering, and beauty culture. Also, schools that had sewing classes, had a
fashion show at the end of the year
where the boys and girls alike would fashion what they had made. According to the Chicago Teen Exhibit at
the Chicago Historical Society, the reason
these classes are so different from today is "many poor and immigrant
families saw little value in studying
subjects like Latin and Botany. Educators knew that young people and their parents would choose school
over work only if it served a practical purpose.
In response, schools offered vocational and commercial courses from dressmaking
to bookkeeping. Growing numbers of young people soon filled technical schools”.
Schools taught lessons in family life, hygiene, and health. According to
Joel Spring this was because "What do we do
with sixty percent of students who aren't gaining anything from a college-prep curriculum? We will give them “life adjustment education”.
In 1940, eight out ten boys who
graduated from school went to war and more than half of the population of the United States
had completed no more than eighth grade. In 1945 fifty-one percent of 17 year olds were
high school graduates. Today, more than 13 million teenagers report to public high school
classes across the United States.
The Scholastics
Aptitude Tests (SAT) began in 1941. They were used as a screening device for college admission and
originally as an Army intelligence test.
The SATs are a major part of
today's teenager's life. To get into a good college, you need to do well on the SAT, considering 60% of today'
s jobs require training beyond high school compared to just 20% in the 1940s. Today's high school students take classes
much different than the classes in the
1940s. They take classes such as English, Mathematics, Science
(one Biology and one Physical Science), U.S. History, Civics, Economics, Physical
Education, Health Education, and Elective, Art or Music or Vocational courses, Career and Technical Education, and a Foreign
Language. At Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), an advanced high
school, students take math classes such as
Mathematics Investigation I to MI
IV. They study in-depth mathematics, and some students even work into the Calculus series of
mathematics. IMSA has numerous classrooms, an auditorium,
and a swimming pool. In the 1940s, St. Michaels High School had a dark
room, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, horses
(for horse back riding lessons), and a bowling alley. At St. Michaels, on the
first floor, there was the gymnasium and
the music room, on the second floor the cafeteria, and on the third floor, the library and the
chemistry labs. This school is much like today’s high school except the
horses. After school, in the 1940s, a teenager might
go home, change clothes, and go to work.
If your family was poor, you would work very hard after school or you did not even go to school, but worked all day, and all
of your earnings would go to your family.
There were not a lot of
high-paying jobs available in Chicago during the 1940s. Bill Flanagan,
a teenage boy during the 1940s, claims "My first official job, I got when
I was 14. I
was a bus boy at the restaurant on the South Side. I got $0.25 an hour. Good money.
I got $5 a week. Of course, you could take a girl out on a date for $5.
Believe me, $5 was a lot of
money." Eva Kelley, a teenager in
the 1940s, was a YMCA locker room
attendant for $0.66 an hour. Yvett Moloney, a young teenager during the late
940s, had a rare job working in a mail
order house for $3.50 a day, and she worked at a telephone company. Other jobs did in the 1940s
include working at the YMCA and teaching
swimming, working at a pizza place, and working at a warehouse. Anna Tyler, an African-American teenager during the 1940s,
worked at the men's club as a waitress, the
office university club, Wiebolt's as a clerk, and an elevator operator. Jerry Warshaw, a teenager in the 1940s, had numerous jobs:
delivery boy at the fish market, a soda jerk, at the Treasury Department, and the post
office. His most memorable job was an usher captain. He had 17 men under him and got paid
$0. 45 an hour. Today we still have ushers,
only they work in performance theaters and at sporting venues. Many teens today work at fast food restaurants and stores such
as Jewel Osco and Walgreens. Today, most
restaurants and grocery stores let
teenagers work there as long as they are 16 or older. Many
high school students today volunteer as well as have a job because service
hours are required to graduate from high
school. Because of World War II, there
was rationing and victory gardens on the home front. There were scrap drives, war bond
drives, and every sort of stamp for food or shoes. "The average gasoline ration was
three gallons a week; the yearly butter ration twelve pounds per person, 26 percent less than
normal; the yearly limit for canned goods thirty-three pounds, thirteen pounds under
usual consumption levels; and people could buy only three new pairs of shoes a year”,
according to historian Michael Uschan. Compare that to today. Today you can buy almost anything. “When traditionalists talk about the Family, they
mean an employed Father, a stay at home
mother, and two school-aged children. This profile only fits 5% of United States families today,” according to historian
Letty Pogrebin. During the 1940s, teenagers and there parents were usually very close. Some
parents who supported the war effort left there teenagers unattended. This caused "renewed social alarm about
juvenile delin- quency. To answer the crisis, social guidance films
shown in the classroom presented scenarios
meant to shape teen behavior into more acceptable forms”, according to a history of American education. From
Zoot suits to baggy pants; from sewing classes to biology; from radios to television, a teenager’s life in the 1940s is
very different from today. [ From Susan Ansell “High School. Education Week: High School Reform”edweek.org/context/topics;/issuespage
cfm?id+cfm?id+15>, (Oct. 4, 2004); Stephen
Feinstein “Decades of the 20th
Century: the 1940s,
from World War II to Jackie Robinson, Chicago Historical
Society, “Teen Chicago”; Eva Kelley interview, no date.
(www.teenchicago.com);
Yvett Mohony
interview, (Nov 23, 2002); (www.teenchicago.com), Student Historian’s
interview with Meghan Murphy, (Oct. 2, 2004); High
School,‘‘ECS IssueSite: High School”, ecs.org/html/issue. asp?issueID=108
(Sept. 15, 2004); High School
Curriculum
Introduction,
www.u46.k12.il.us/high_school_curriculum_introdu.html> (Oct. 10, 2004);
Sara Mondale and Sara B. Patton, School: The Story of
American Public Education; Letty
C. Pogrebin, Family politics, Love and Power on an Intimate
Frontier; Sammy Skobel
interview Nov. 22, 2003. (www.teenchicago.com); Tom Snyder,
“Educational
Attainment: Literacy From 1870 to 1979”,
www.nces.ed.gov/naal/historicaldata/edattain.
asap (Oct. 4, 2004); Michael V. Uschan; A Cultural History
of the United States:
Through the Decades the 1940s.]
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